[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

[Milos Rancic]

Here are a couple of my notes about chapter organization.

While I was thinking about the most efficient way how to organize WM
Serbia as its president (I am not president of WM RS anymore) at
different cities in Serbia, I had the next situation:

- The biggest cities in Serbia, after Belgrade, are Nis and Novi Sad
(metro area of each of them is between 200 and 300K). Novi Sad is 80km
distant, while Nis is 200km distant. We need something more than an
hour to reach Novi Sad by car and something more than 2 hours to reach
Nis (there is a highway Belgrade-Nis and not finished highway
Belgrade-Novi Sad). By bus it is 2 hours for Novi Sad and 3 hours for
Nis.

- While cars are often in Serbia, they are not so often as in Western
Europe or USA. I think that from 10-15 Wikimedians who participated in
our meetings regularly we had only 2-3 cars. So, much more reasonable
option is to go by bus.

- With a good car in Germany it is possible to pass much bigger
distances than 200km in 3 hours. So, effectively, Serbia is "bigger"
than maybe Benelux and western part of Germany together (there are
places in Serbia for which is needed 7 hours of driving from
Belgrade).

- While it is often to see some people from Novi Sad in Belgrade and
vice versa, it is not something which is done at a regular basis. I
may expect to see one person from Nis who is traveling relatively
regularly -- a couple of time per year. So, more or less, our
coordination with people out of Belgrade metro area was Internet and
telephone based.

- This implies that if WM RS wants to have offices in Belgrade, Nis
and Novi Sad, Wikimedians from those areas need to have a lot of
autonomy. At least, they would need their own bank account and a
person in charge for that account. When they have a bank account, it
would be normal that they organize their own activities, of course, in
coordination with the rest of WM RS. But, speaking generally, this is
a lot of autonomy. The next level of autonomy are separate
organizations.

- BTW, we started as Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro. We had two
members from Montenegro, but only one of our members (who is living,
btw, in France) went to Montenegro partially as a Wikimedian, but he
didn't success to meet then only one of our members.

So, this is the story about the organization of one chapter which has
transport problems. While I am sure that WM NL chapter doesn't have
such problems, even Netherlands has approximately same size as Serbia
and around three times more inhabitants. However, I am wondering how
much members WM DE has from the eastern part of Germany, south of
Berlin. The same is for WM FR and central-south parts of France, as
well as for WM IT and southern parts Italia, including Sicily (AFAIK,
Sardinia is much less inhabited). (For people from USA, US government
institutions often compares size of Serbia with the size of Kentucky.)

My girlfriend is an architect. She is projecting bank offices all over
Serbia (no, it is not so good position, like it is at the West). Banks
are able to make their organization very effective in the most parts
of Serbia. They have Internet in all of their offices, they have
regular real-life communication. But, while Wikimedia is able to offer
good salaries to a couple of staff, it is not able to offer any penny
to a Wikimedian from one 50.000 inhabitants big town in Serbia, 5
hours of driving distant from Belgrade.

Even a chapter in relatively small country (distance of 7 hours of
driving a car is not a lot) like Serbia is has such amount of
difficulties in organization. OK, it is not impossible to solve them.
However, distances like New York--small town in Illinois or small town
in Moscow--small town in Volgograd oblast -- are so big that it is not
possible to make a functional organization. As I said, I really don't
think that it is possible to have a functional organization inside of
some bigger provinces of some big countries.